No, Thanksgiving Is Not A Celebration Of Triumph Over Socialism: Your Tofurkey Warblog

It’s Thanksgiving Day, so as we gather together with (or hide from) our families, however functional or dysfunctional they may be, let us remember the true meaning of any American holiday: It’s an opportunity to pound home a political lesson about why We Are Good and They Are Bad. It’s a revered grim tradition: You serve Susan Stamberg’s socialist NPR cranberry relish, and your Teabagger brother-in-law recites how the settlers of Plymouth Plantation nearly starved because they had socialism forced upon them, but finally prospered after they became capitalists. Here’s a fairly typical version of the story that was emailed to our Wonkette tip line; other versions are promoted by ugly bag of mostly lipids Rush Limbaugh and by the now-departing Rep. Todd Akin (R-Shut Down).

Happily, there are a couple of good debunkings of this idiocy, although they probably won’t carry much weight with teahadis, since they come from the radical communist New York Times and the Marxist-Trotskyist-Muslim-Gangnam-Style Right Wing Watch. Should culture war break out around the dinner table, you may just want to say you got your rebuttals from Paul Harvey. Then when they go to look it up on their smartphone, you can spill gravy on it. Be sure to apologize. (We got that tactic from Saul Alinsky.)

The original colony at Plymouth Bay had been founded by Puritans who hoped to emulate the early Christians by keeping all their worldly goods in common. They forgot St. Paul’s admonition that only those who worked should be fed from the common store.

Other versions leave out any mention of Biblical sharing (which might raise uncomfortable questions about that Gallilean redistributionist anyway) and present the Pilgrims as victims of “a short-lived form of agricultural communism” imposed upon them by their sponsors back in England (BOOO!); in inay case, the scheme soon failed because under socialism, nobody had an incentive to work:

This system quickly failed. The women described the communal chores as a form of slavery, men rapidly lost motivation, and the able-bodied feigned illness to avoid work.

“For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.”

Finally, after everyone nearly starved, Bradford threw out communism and gave each family their own parcel of land to work, and then even Nature rejoiced by bringing forth a bountiful harvest, YAY individual initiative!

Except, maybe that’s all a lot of hooey? For one thing, the first three-day Thanksgiving feast occurred in 1621, while what Bradford called the “common course” was still very much in effect. The actual division of land into family-owned plots came in 1623, a detail that some versions of the wingnut story find it useful to lie about; John Stossel actually moves the year of the first Thanksgiving to 1623. In any case, the original motivation for pooling resources had nothing to do with socialist ideology:

the plan was in the interest of realizing a profit sooner, and was only intended for the short term; historians say the Pilgrims were more like shareholders in an early corporation than subjects of socialism.

“It was directed ultimately to private profit,” said Richard Pickering, a historian of early America and the deputy director of Plimoth Plantation, a museum devoted to keeping the Pilgrims’ story alive.

The arrangement did not produce famine. If it had, Bradford would not have declared the three days of sport and feasting in 1621 that became known as the first Thanksgiving. “The celebration would never have happened if the harvest was going to be less than enough to get them by,” Mr. Pickering said. “They would have saved it and rationed it to get by.”

The competing versions of the story note Bradford’s writings about “confusion and discontent” and accusations of “laziness” among the colonists. But Mr. Pickering said this grumbling had more to do with the fact that the Plymouth colony was bringing together settlers from all over England, at a time when most people never moved more than 10 miles from home. They spoke different dialects and had different methods of farming, and looked upon each other with great wariness.

“One man’s laziness is another man’s industry, based on the agricultural methods they’ve learned as young people,” he said.

Stupid historians, with their “context.” Can’t they just recognize socialism causes laziness? People never help each other unless you pay them to! Oh, hey, what was that about getting paid? As one happy anarcho-socialist points out, the division of land into private family plots (which, had been part of the plan all along, not a reaction to the failure of socialism) wasn’t even actual capitalism:

Everyone had their own parcel of land – they were self-employed! They kept the product of their own labour. If it were capitalism, they would have given the land to a few landlords and turned everyone else into wage-workers. The landlord would have kept the product of the workers’ labour and the actual workers, well, they would get just a fraction of what they produced.

Even the notion that individual plots increased harvests is pretty dubious; as that egghead Plimoth Plantation director notes:

The real reason agriculture became more profitable over the years, Mr. Pickering said, is that the Pilgrims were getting better at farming crops like corn that had been unknown to them in England.

That is obviously just socialist nonsense, as the real magic was the magic of the marketplace, which, uhhh… hadn’t quite really become a booming hive of capital yet. It was subsistence farming all the way, but why let that get in the way.

So, to wrap up: Not surprisingly, wingnuts know as much about history as they do about how the U.S. Constitution works. And if you want a good read about the Massachussetts Bay colony’s early days — the guys who came a bit after the Pilgrims — go read Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates. Good luck at dinner, and may you and your teabagger relatives enjoy the warm embrace of family, if not a shared understanding of reality.

(You didn’t really think we’d get through this without Ponies, did you? Silly.)

About the author

Doktor Zoom Is the pseudonym of Marty Kelley, who lives in Boise, Idaho. He acquired his nym from a fan of Silver-Age comics after being differently punctual to too many meetings. He is not a medical doctor, although he has a real PhD (in Rhetoric and Composition).

Comments

I love ya, Dr. Zoom, but there's no way I'm going to be able to get through this entire post. Happy [Drunken] Thanksgiving!

sbj1964

Eat drink,and be merry,but not gay.That you have to save for Easter.

nounverb911

If the Indians only knew what they were getting into, they should have had their casinos up and running and taken the Pilgrims for all they were worth.

not that Dewey

ABC News must really be kicking themselves for allowing John Stossel to slip away like that.

Doktor Zoom

Hey, Dewey, while I was looking at last year's Burroughs post, I re-read your Thanksgiving note, and I just wanted to let you know how glad I am that you and Owls and everyone else who chimed in on that thread are still keeping on keeping on. Huzzah!

not that Dewey

The 2nd such Thanksgiving in a row, thanks in no small part to you and the many much-appreciated well-wishers and fellow travelers in that thread — something to be thankful for indeed.

I got a little teary-eyed, though, reading the Names of the Dead: Owls (who is also still keeping on), flamingpdog (now known as "deleted2609889"), and even Neilist (The Asshole with the Heart of Gold), that lousy fucker. They were a big part of it, too. Let us remember them, and Extemporanus, for he was also a kind soul, and be thankful for all the times they made us laugh.

Doktor Zoom

Pours out a 40 on the ground.

Wonders if that was supposed to be 40 ounces of something other than marinara sauce.

sbj1964

The honored fallen.May the gods keep them safe.

nounverb911

This comment may have been approved by the comment approval approvers.

Swampgas_Man

This comment is communal property. Share amongst yourselves.

LionHeartSoyDog

Italics are Italians from the post-Mussolini era. Also, Socialist.

( god bless them, everyone).
– too early?

Negropolis

Are Italics similar to Iranics?

sbj1964

Irony the raipers witt of humor.

noodlesalad

Would read this whole thing, but too busy enjoying Kid Rock's "Detroit, Michigan" performance at the Lions game, complete with 300 white kids bussed in from Cranbrook dancing on the field.

This staged performance is why the Romney folks thought they had a shot at the rust belt.

sbj1964

They had to be bussed in there are not that many white kids in Detroit.

Nice try wingnuts. A lot of the people on the Mayflower were plain Anglicans – not Puritan Separatists. The Puritans were a minority and the two factions were always getting on each others nerves.

Those recruits were not Puritans or Separatists. They were Anglicans. But mostly, they were people who didn’t really think about religion too much, who just wanted a chance to go to America. The Separatists, then, were in the minority as the Mayflower set sail. Fights between the two groups broke out almost immediately. The Separatists got on the others’ nerves with their religion, which permeated all aspects of their lives, and the Anglicans got on the Separatists’ nerves with their deliberate sacrilege and mockery of religion. When they landed in America, the Separatists had a hard time keeping control of the colony from the majority.

You get to gorge on waaaay too much food that was, um, borrowed from Native US Amercians and celebrate that greed won out over generosity as the same starving Pilgrims took the land of the nearby natives.

Negropolis

Hey, so long as I can haz some pumpkinz pies, I don't care what the hell they believe about the holiday. lol

sbj1964

You forgot the pilgrims nice house gifts of plague infected blankets.Within 80 years of landing the native people were all but extinct.

SexySmurf

For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.

How did that comment get past the journal's administrators?

Doktor Zoom

Oh dear… I SWEAR I did not use that quote for the purpose of trolling the auto-editor!

GeneralLerong

Maybe AutoEditor is smarter…than we can possibly imagine.

All hail AutoEditor!

Doktor Zoom

Skynet says hi.

Negropolis

I, for one, welcome our newly sentient overlord.

NellCote71

I don't think it mentioned Lou Sarah's offspring, that's why.

sbj1964

I blame the Boy Scouts.

nounverb911

Your comment must be approved by the site admins before it will appear publicly.

This one seemed to.

AlterNewt

Wheels within wheels.

sbj1964

Nazi adminstrators with there god like powers.Fight like a MAN!

BigSkullF*ckingDog

The pilgrims were dirty, lazy hippies until the Indians gave them the gift of capitalism. Or something like that.

Terry

Because North America was a hot bed of rampant capitalism before the Europeans showed up.

sbj1964

And Maze.Injuns they are like children with all that sharing.

Mittens Howell, III

So, Susan Rice lied about the whole thing.

nounverb911

Too bad Shirley Temple isn't the UN Ambassador any more.

sbj1964

Sec.of state Rice,sounds familiar.

Mittens Howell, III

Just pulled into a self-serve gas station on the way to my parents and a nice old man named Mitt filled my car up and cleaned my windscreen with bitter, bitter tears.

nounverb911

Wow, Mitt finally found a job he's qualified for.

zerosumgame0005

barely…

Doktor Zoom

(holds flashlight under chin) And then, a few miles down the road, he heard growls and whimpering… and it was coming from the roof of the car!

Swampgas_Man

Gloating season officially ends on Black Friday.

NellCote71

Awe. I was looking at we'll into 2013 to wrap myself in the cloak of schadenfreude.

102415

No, it does not. I want the whole four years.

sbj1964

I saw Mitt outside a homeless shelter with a crack pipe.Very sad.

http://lostintarnation.blogspot.com/ SayItWithWookies

See, socialism doesn't work — no wonder it's outlawed in the Constitution, which enshrines the much more productive economics of capitalism.

sbj1964

Capitalism Works! Well at least for 2% of the population.

http://wonkette.com smokefilledroommate

Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage. They could do with it whatever they wanted. He essentially turned loose the free market on 'em.

1621, 1623, what 's difference in wingnut land. As long as it fits your narrative, why let facts get in the way of a good piece of propaganda.

sbj1964

Was that a quote from Himler?

Naked_Bunny

ugly bag of mostly lipids Rush Limbaugh

Nerd. Also, awesome.

Negropolis

What's the rest of the bag filled with? Bile and failure?

sbj1964

Conservatives say the darndest things.Bless their hearts.

nounverb911

The following words may have been banned by the automatic comment killer.

Native American
Indian
Casino
Pilgrim

nounverb911

The following words may have been banned by the automatic comment killer.

All of them, Katie?

sbj1964

The 7 words you can't say on the Wonkette.Wordbots S@cK.

Detesticle

What a surprise conservatives are still living 400 years in the past.

Blueb4sinrise

That's an improvement!!!!

sbj1964

Conservative will have to be dragged into the 21st century.Of course after you have them bussed in from the 18th.They hate bussing.How does it make a conservative smarter having them sit next to a normal person?They should be with they're own kind.

http://wonkette.com ChillBill

Spending Thanksgiving with my wingnuts-in-law. They started with the whole "Barry is Santa" meme and now moving onto gay marriage. Kid Rock is on TV. Somebody fucking help me…

Naked_Bunny

You went to Thanksgiving dinner without a gun or cyanide pills??

http://wonkette.com ChillBill

I was even stupid enough to ask them to stay away from politics. Little did I know…

glamourdammerung

Leave. Or ask them to, depending on if you are at your place or theirs. They are the ones going out of their way to be unpleasant, so why put up with it?

Thanksgiving is supposed to last for 3 days? I'm gonna need more wine!

Also, nap time.

Ducksworthy

But the Pilgrims did have diabetes scooters. Right?

Guppy

Paid for by Medicare, natch.

Negropolis

Yes, but they were horsedrawn. Wait, scratch that. No.

HistoriCat

Dok – maybe you should find a girlfriend. I mean, I greatly appreciate the Thanksgiving day posts – don't get me wrong! But … there's more to life than politics, snark, and My Little Pony. Just sayin'.

Maybe you can lead the way when Rebecca rolls out the Wonkette Personals?

Doktor Zoom

there's more to life than politics, snark, and My Little Pony

Of course there is. There's crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of their women. With votes.

(Actually, I was just over at a friend's, helping to set up for the feast, and used that line to illustrate "schadenfreude," which one of the other guests helping out had not heard of.)

GeneralLerong

I'm with Dok. I'm also with a case of champagne. And alone with a border collie. So alone. It's snowing. The wind is blowing 35 knots. But the turkey still has two hours to go before I can load it into the pickup and meet the relatives. Hopefully the snow won't get higher than 3 inches, I can handle that on 4WD.

Alaska. Why do you ask?

102415

You need a big fire and a fryer.

Stevola

There's crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of their women = Politics

I think the proximity of this story to the palin turkey grinder story is a perfect metaphor for the tea baggers relationship with 'history'.

http://www.gurukalehuru.wordpress.com gurukalehuru

It sounds a bit like the history of Israel, where idealistic, young socialists emigrated from Czarist Russia to band together in Kibbutzim and drain the swamps and irrigate the desert and plant lots of date orchards and such, until they discovered they could make more money smuggling diamonds from South Africa and money laundering for the U.S. arms industry.
Yay, capitalism!

Negropolis

Well, that, and before they were swamped by a lot of European Jews who took secular Zionism and injected it with a heaping of "Promised Land" religious bullshit.

TribecaMike

Mmmmm, this month-old caviar and moldy yogurt is exquisite. Don't you wish you were me, libtardos?

Your's in cash, Mr. Donald Trump

vulpes82

I must second the recommendation of Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates. I read it every year at Thanksgiving. (Yes, yes, Puritans aren't Pilgrims, etc. but they were all spoilsports with buckles on their hats, so it still FEELS appropriate.)

TribecaMike

The mention of Paul Harvey brings back fond memories of listening to his radio show in the car and how after the obligatory "Good day," my liberal dad would invariably respond with "And fuck you."

Fox n Fiends

If only those pilgrims had gone to Mexico to start a polygamous commune…we'd all be speaking Bain right now.

SaintRond

I'm thankful thinking about the bleakness on this turkey day for the Republicans who lost and their families. I'm going to pretend I'm drinking their tears in my egg nog. Mmm… Yummy.

PsycWench

Probably a lot of those tears taste like rum right now, so that totally works.

TribecaMike

As the libertarian asshats are fond of saying, what doesn't gobble gobble gobble makes you stronger.

PsycWench

Through artful filtering of Facebook posting and emails I had avoided even knowing that such a story existed. But I'm not surprised.
OT: for entertainment, watch this. But be careful. My teenaged daughter and I walk around the house singing the song.

The book looks to be very funny, but it would be hard to beat the one-star reviews for true humor.

natl_[redacted]_cmdr

Wow, I had not read those reviews. They are an earnest, humorless bunch, aren't they?

Doktor Zoom

Sounds a bit like Edie Brickell!

gullywompr

So, here on Thanksgiving, I just want to say to each and every one of you – thanks.

Doktor Zoom

You missed a couple of people, and now they're pissed.

http://wonkette.com/ Sharkey

I am thankful for Walking Dead Episode 5: No Time Left.
Those guys know how to eat!

CalvinsChoice

Susan Stamberg? Give me some Ken Layne Cranberries orSTFU.

http://howtosavetheworld.ca/ BZ1

So much easier just to make stuff up…

http://lookatthisfuckingcentrist.wordpress.com Both Sides Do It

As a special holiday treat, one of the free market nihilists at the Volokh Conspiracy (home of the Dark Lord of Nutty Obamacare Legal Arguments, Randy Barnett) posted a link to some Townhall mouthbreather going off on Bradford's journal. Par for the course.

Except he had posted the same link in 2010, and the commenters over there tore him a new one at the time with analysis like what Doktor Zoom provides here (minus the ponies). The new post, of course, just reposts the same link without bothering to even mention the problems that were brought up at the time.

And the new post contained a link to the old post.

Mendacious readings of history to vaguely justify an abstract ideal that doesn't inform current economic or public policy debates, warmed-over, without bothering to even mention the objections that were brought up the first time it was served, all nice and linked together as if there isn't a problem. And these are the intellectuals.

Truly a bountiful wingnutty feast.

102415

I didn't get that, intellectuals? I'm confused.

http://lookatthisfuckingcentrist.wordpress.com Both Sides Do It

Ah, sorry. The Volokh Conspiracy is a group blog of some of the leading lights of libertarian/conservative legal theory. The liberal equivalent would probably be Balkinization which has people like Jack Balkin and Bruce Ackerman.

Fer instance Randy Barnett posts at VC, and he wrote the "Obamacare gives the federal government unlimited police power which is reserved for the states it's unconstitutional QED suck it libtards" argument that melted Anthony Kennedy's panties. The Thanksgiving posts are by Ilya Somin, who is trying to become the Ollie Reeder to Barnett's Malcolm Tucker in the conservative legal ecosystem.

So one of the most prominent conservative/libertarian legal theory blogs is putting out this "link to Townhall and get its shite argument taken apart then do it again because fuckit" stuff.

102415

Ha! Thanks.

Fukui-sanYesOta

2 Thessalonians 3:10

"For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." "

Work in the U.S.S.R. is a duty and a matter of honour for every able-bodied
citizen, in accordance with the principle: "He who does not work, neither
shall he eat." The principle applied in the U.S.S.R. is that of socialism:
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."

teapartynyc2011

A way to show thanks.

It says a lot about the evolved character of Americans. These recent wars are anything but popular, but we never ever, even for a second, thought to take it out on American servicemen and women. 60's radicalism forever tainted itself with the disrespect it showed returning service men and women simply because it did not like the war. We The People decide where and when to go to war, not the soldier who's duty is to simply answer the call — right or wrong, we make the call, they carry the burden. http://youtu.be/2tgm33OrO3k

fyi, That vet disrespect story is as much a myth as Pilgrim socialism.

Also, too:
Vet: Jimi Hendrix
Not a Vet: Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, and many of the other Republican chicken hawks

http://wonkette.com/ Noah_Hegemon

"That vet disrespect story is as much a myth as Pilgrim socialism. "

Affirmative.

teapartynyc2011

"At first, rather than giving returning veterans of the war welcoming parades, Americans seemed to shun, if not denigrate, the 2 million-plus Americans who went to Vietnam, the 1.6 million who served in combat, the 300,000 physically wounded, the many more who bore psychological scars, the 2,387 listed as "missing in action," and the more than 58,000 who died. Virtually nothing was done to aid veterans and their loved ones who needed assistance in adjusting. Then a torrent of fiction, films, and television programs depicted Vietnam vets as drug-crazed psychotic killers, as vicious executioners in Vietnam and equally vicious menaces at home. Not until after the 1982 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., did American culture acknowledge their sacrifice and suffering, and concede that most had been good soldiers in a bad war."

I wrote my senior Gov't final on the US utopians. It really was an excuse ro write about Marxism and get away with it.

NellCote71

Bradford . . . gave each family their own parcel of land to work.

Is this the 17th Century equivalent of asking your parents for $20,000 to start your own business?

DahBoner

Ja

DahBoner

Whoa

DahBoner

Are these the same pilgrims who having their crops failed and turned to cannabalism, were bailed out by the collective socialist Indian corn and dried deer jerkey?

Negropolis

Come on, DahBoner. Let up a little. History is hard.

teapartynyc2011

True, they were not socialist — hell, it hadn't even been invented yet. But — they lived a terrific imitation of it.

"Yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour and service did repine that they should spend their time and streingth to worke for other mens wives and children, with out any recompense….And for men's wives to be commanded to doe service for other men, as dresing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brooke it." http://youtu.be/66QdQErc8JQ

The good thing about Blah Thanksgiving is that the wingnuts are very few and very far between. Oh, and yams and greens of every kind and baked macaroni and cheese and…

BerkeleyBear

But, but, but Thanksgiving is a white food holiday. White meat, white potatoes, white bread, with canned cranberry slop as the only major blotch of color. Even the green beans get a coating of pale mushroom soup.

I'm kidding/weeping for my lost youth. Personally, I would love nothing more than an invite to a Thanksgiving with flavor that I didn't have to cook (or at least reheat). If it is anything like a blah wedding reception, it would be a technicolor starburst of awesomeness compared to my upbringing.

mayor_quimby

The gf and I laughed about that today. I said that Sarah Benincasa asked for bigoted tweets from her fans, and the gf said "let's face it, repubs are few and far between at any black turkey day" .
Then we joined our family around the campfire to tell Whitey stories.

Negropolis

Every conversation I've had with extended family since the election has consisted of small talk and then someone works in how glad we are Obama won, and then we talk for another half-hour about how fucked up Romney's campaign was. lol

decentcitizen

The hard thing about history is it has so many facts in it. That can really get it the way of a good narrative I learned when I was defending an almost certainly guilty defendant.

SubhumanVarmint

From the NY Times link, above:

"Rush Limbaugh repeats the Thanksgiving story of Plymouth every year, reading it from a chapter in one of his books titled 'Dead White Guys, or What Your History Books Never Told You.' "

Yeah, cuz you hardly ever hear about rich dead Protestant white guys in American history. It's all about those Native Americans that stood in the way of white progress. /snark off

I think I'm gonna go throw up now.

ttommyunger

Missed the part about head lice, shitting outdoors in the dead of winter and infant mortality. Such a festive time!

BenGleck

Put a sparkling glitter-pony on your Thankgiving table. Yum!

BenGleck

We celebrate Thanksgiving better than anyone else in the world!

http://wonkette.com/ Noah_Hegemon

Was this after they robbed the socialist Indians' grave sites and found the corn and grains that "God provided" them in order to survive their first year, or after the Indians taught them what would grow in their collective plots to save them from starving long term?

Midway117

No mention of how all these undocumented aliens snuck over here and took real Americans' jobs? Build the danged fence!